Blogging the San Diego Padres… established 1997

I Think I’m In Love

Our friends at Seamheads mentioned something called the National Pastime Almanac the other day. According to the web site, “The National Pastime Almanac is a Baseball Encyclopedia with statistics, streaks, rankings, records, awards, etc. from 1876 through 2009, regular and post season.”

Uh, okay. I might be interested.

Also, it’s free. As in, completely. And addictive. As in, completely.

What can you do with this thing? I’m still working that out (which is half the fun), but mainly you can create all kinds of lists. Here are a few I’ve thrown together so far:

Players Who Hit 100 or More Home Runs in Their First Four Years with the Padres

Adrian Gonzalez, 130

Nate Colbert, 127

Ken Caminiti, 121

Phil Nevin, 108

Ryan Klesko, 106

Padres Pitchers Who Won 20 Percent or More of Their Team’s Games

Randy Jones 1976, 30.1%

Randy Jones 1975, 28.2%

Gaylord Perry 1978, 25.0%

Clay Kirby 1971, 24.6%

Andy Benes 1993, 24.6%

Dave Roberts 1971, 23.0%

Pat Dobson 1970, 22.2%

Andy Hawkins 1985, 21.7%

Jake Peavy 2007, 21.3%

Clay Kirby 1972, 20.7%

Career Double Plays Turned per 162 Games by a Padres Shortstop (min. 500 games)

Melvin, I’m still playing around with this thing, but the main differences I see are:

–The National Pastime Almanac is free
–It is a standalone piece of software that you download and install on your computer, so no Internet connection is necessary to use it once you’ve got it up and running
–Some of the reports (e.g., Padres Pitchers Who Won 20 Percent or More of Their Team’s Games) are pretty different from what P-I offers.

Bottom line: I find P-I to be indispensable in my research. I’ll gladly pay for the service because it does amazing things. The National Pastime Almanac is pretty slick in its own right, though, and I expect it to augment P-I in my work. It’s one more tool in the proverbial belt. And a lot of fun.